“She whispered, ‘Is this alright?’ because we were in a church and I said, ‘I’m Jewish’… and then I put it in.”

Ben Kaufman, a junior here at UAlbany, was not shy at all when I approached him and asked how he had lost his virginity.

He filled me in on all the details; “We had been on and off hooking up since the 7th grade and in 10th grade we would meet up in a church for deaf people that was attached to our school, after my basketball practice.”

One day after fooling around they decided that they were ready to do the deed… until his mom called to tell him that she had arrived to pick him up. He proudly explained that the next day… in the same place, they successfully had sex.

While remembering this, the smile across Kaufman’s face grew huge. Having sex in a church is an item on bucket-lists across the country and Kaufman had checked it off early. He started this chapter of his life with a bang. Pun intended.

While searching the university for ten people willing to open up and tell me the story of how they lost their virginity I came across many different responses. Some people shied away from the idea, laughing or blushing. Some, like Kaufman were more then willing to share the tale. Some, again like Kaufman, even made me laugh and blush when they told their stories.

Ben Tack, a junior at UAlbany assured me, “It wasn’t awkward at all.”

When he was 17 and on a family cruise Tack had the perfect opportunity to have sex, an opportunity he couldn’t pass on, and luckily for me, could not resist talking about.

“It was actually a threesome, and I never saw them again.”

The more experienced girls that Tack met on a Carnival Cruise were friends traveling with one of their family’s. Tack met them at the bar one night and the three began talking.

“We made plans the next day for me to come to their cabin while everybody was at the pool. And I brought some vodka I took from the mini-fridge.”

While their stories may be unique in detail, the main themes are very common. Kaufman and Tack, like many other boys becoming men, wanted to have sex.

Chris Spinelli, junior, explains this desire like nobody else that I had talked to.

“I was definitely curious, but in my eyes, and in a lot of other guys’ eyes, I think it is just for a sense of manhood. I wasn’t really ready for the experience though.”

Sex is a rite of passage. A ticket to maturity and as Spinelli explains, manhood.

Spinelli stamped his ticket when he was 16 with a girl that he had been seeing for about a month. She had already been with two other guys and Spinelli saw her as a seasoned vet.

“Before it happened, and I knew it was almost that time, my heart was racing non-stop. ‘What do I do?’ ‘How should I do it?’ ‘How does she like it?’ All of those thoughts… but it didn’t really matter because, five minutes later, the deed was done.”

Spinelli is the first guy to admit to me that, if he could go back and wait for someone more special to have his first time with, he would.

Sure, I can tell you first hand, guys are not the only ones with this desire. Girls want sex too. It’s weird though, because most of the girls I spoke too waited significantly longer to act on that desire.

“It was only like three months ago.” Veronica Vergara, junior, told me. “It was with a kid from back home that I had been hooking up with for six months. We actually got in a huge fight and broke things off, but one night we ran into each other at a bar and he apologized for everything, I forgave him, and he invited me to stay over his house that night.”

Vergara shrugged and went on, “He wasn’t my boyfriend, he didn’t use a condom, I hit my head on his shelf… but as bad and as wrong as it seemed, it was actually pretty perfect and I don’t regret it at all.”

I asked Nicole Bologna to tell me her story, “…I don’t have one.”

“No, I haven’t had sex yet.” Bologna is not a super religious daddy’s girl, or a gross guy repellent, but she is a 20 year-old virgin. She is just waiting until the time is right.

Christina Ruggerio, senior, had sex for the first time her freshman year of college.

“At parties and stuff I would always flirt with this boy and one night when we were smashed he slept over. I finally told him a few days later that he had been my first, and it turned out that I had been his first too.”

Christin Brown, sophomore, waited until she was 18 to have sex. She hand-picked a boy she had been seeing and really liked. He was a year older and had already had sex, so she told him she had too.

“The whole thing was awkward and uncomfortable, and I was worried the whole time he would figure it out. I really like sex now, hate the boy though.”

Everybody is going to have sex at his or her own time. It is always tricky, and despite what Tack says, it is always awkward. Some people wait for the perfect moment, and some, like Spinelli rush into it and might wish forever that they could change that.

One thing that everybody can agree on it that sex is sex. The most touchy, personal, awkward subject. Worse then religion, worse then politics. But when people are willing to talk about it, if you listen, you will realize that everybody wants it.

Rocking lede, great stories and quotes. This would be an A except for atrocious punctuation and capitalizations on direct quotes. We must go over in class, I think. But you need to learn this. Here’s a record number of punctuation marks at the end of a sentence: And I brought some vodka I took from the mini-fridge.,”. FOUR??? B+